Generative Research

Observe people using products in their contexts to gain a nuanced understanding of their behaviors and perspectives

Generative Research PROCESS

Formulate a hypothesis

Formulate a hypothesis of the problem you are trying to solve. Describe the challenges of your research, the aspirations, focus areas, the guiding principles and the design objectives.

Plan your Activities

Based on your hypothesis prepare the toolkit and materials needed to represent the experiences of the user within the defined framework
Set the stage and the size of the research group
Construct and sequence your own co-design activities
Make a workshop pilot to spot opportunities for improvement

Facilitate the workshop

Use your communication skills
Empathize with the participants in a human way
Identify leaders and opposers in the group
Capture everything that happens during the session
Actively engage with people

Interpret the results

Dispose irrelevant insights
Single out the most relevant quotes for each individual person
Look for emerging patterns
Visually document your findings in a story form
Brainstorm design ideas

Why is it useful?

It helps to discover what people know and feel to later inspire the design of an artifact, a service or a system. Generative Research is a great tool to empathize with users and collect knowledge that is difficult to express with words.

Takeaways

Direct collaboration with users allows to discover the mindset of people regarding a specific problem and later translate it into a feasible solution

Users are no longer perceived as passive consumers, instead they actively participate in the design process of a product

People are creative by nature, they are after all the experts at understanding their own ways of life

Generative Research is great starting point to develop innovative ideas through collaborative efforts